Music Feature

The Music Man

Music Writer Rob Sheffield Speaks at the University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writer's House

The only thing more animated than Rob Sheffield’s writing is
Rob Sheffield. In the quaint Arts Café of Penn’s Kelly Writer’s House, his
hands move up and down as wildly as his voice changes accents. A reading from
his latest book, Talking to Girls About
Duran Duran, becomes a theatrical performance in which Sheffield transforms
into his 1980s, music-obsessed self that the book depicts.

His obsession hasn’t gone away. Sheffield has been a
music journalist for the past twenty years and currently writes a pop culture
column for Rolling Stone. His
knowledge and passion for music commands the room; he can barely stand still as
he gushes about every genre from Grinderman to Taylor Swift.

Talking to Girls
About Duran Duran details the adventure of Sheffield’s youth through the
lens of the music he listened to. Each chapter, he explains, is set up like a
song, a song that reminds him of a particular theme or story.

On his book, author Darcy Steinke says, “Sheffield uses
music the way some people use scripture—to elucidate and sanctify the mysteries
of life.” At the Writer’s House, Sheffield’s fervent digressions on the
rockstar status of Neil Diamond, the “squeakocity” of Justin Bieber, or the
confusion that his purple shirt—decorated with the name of a band called Thank
You—caused at the train station makes clear his ability to find enchantment in music.

This enchantment comes through in his writing, and he is
not intimidated by the abundance of opinions feeding music blogs and websites
twenty-four hours a day. “I enjoy the instant babble feed of nothingness that
is constant…I just don’t want it to end there,” he exclaims. The critiques that
appear just hours after a song or album is released cannot tell the whole
story. Sheffield allows new music to linger in his mind, revealing the multiple
layers he knows all songs contain. Even if he doesn’t like a song or artist, a
huge rarity, he sets out to understand why.

No musical artist can escape Rob Sheffield’s vivacious
opinions, but as a man who absolutely refuses to dislike a song without
considering every possible praiseworthy quality, I don’t see why they’d want
to.